


What the Water Gave Me: 5 Times Thor Encountered Jormungandr Before Ragnarok, and One Time that the World Was Ending

by Shiny_n_new



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Epic Battles, Norse Mythology - Freeform, Other, Predator/Prey, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-01
Updated: 2012-04-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 20:35:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiny_n_new/pseuds/Shiny_n_new
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eternity is quite a long time to have to deal with the creature that will cause your own death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What the Water Gave Me: 5 Times Thor Encountered Jormungandr Before Ragnarok, and One Time that the World Was Ending

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://norsekink.livejournal.com/6119.html?thread=10461927#t10461927) on NorseKink.

**First:** _As I move my feet towards your body, I can hear this beat. It fills my head up and gets louder and louder._

This was _not_ what Thor had expected his niece and nephews to look like. Perhaps that was his own fault, since nothing Loki did ever turned out quite like Thor was expecting. Still, Thor felt like it wasn't such a ridiculous thing to assume that Loki's children would at least look slightly like Loki. Or like Asgardians at all.

Instead, Thor was babysitting a half-dead girl, a wolf pup, and a very large snake. Despite being born only a few weeks ago, all three of them were growing at a spectacular rate. The girl, Hel, looked like a child of four. The pup, Fenrir, was already the size of a small hound. And the snake, who hadn't been named yet, came up to Thor's knees when it coiled itself and stretched across the room when fully unfurled.

Loki just laughed whenever he was asked for an explanation. “The ice giantess fancied me, what can I say?”

Thor knew that something about the children had upset his father badly, something far beyond the fact that combining Asgardian and Jotun genes apparently produced a small zoo and the living dead. Thor hadn't seen Odin so shaken for centuries. He'd locked himself in the council room with several of his advisors and hadn't been out for hours. The only thing he'd said to Thor was "Don't touch the snake."

Loki, who was responsible for all of this madness, was gleefully teleporting in and out of the room, bringing Fenrir things to chew and Hel toys to play with. He had petted the snake's head once or twice and shoved several coils into the sunlight, but seemed otherwise content to let his reptilian spawn sleep. Thor leaned against the wall, trying to make sense of it all.

Fenrir apparently grew bored with gnawing through a table and scampered over to one of the columns supporting the ceiling, digging his sharp little teeth into the metal with ease.

“No, bad!” Thor said, scolding. “Pup, stop that!”

“Don’t talk to my son as though he’s a common mongrel,” Loki called over his shoulder, not even looking at Thor. He was busy stacking blocks with Hel.

Thor sighed, prayed for patience, and walked over to the column, intending to shoo Fenrir away from it himself. One of the serpent’s coils rested near him, and Thor carefully stepped over it. Once he was in no danger of crushing Loki’s spawn, Thor leaned a little closer out of curiosity. The snake didn’t dart around the way the wolf and the girl did, and so Thor hadn’t needed to corral it yet.

Its scales glittered, but not in a way that Thor had seen on any other creature. It was like light was trapped inside the scales, not simply reflecting off of them, and it was more than a little unsettling. The scales lay smoothly over pure muscle, coils and coils of it, and Thor felt nervous despite himself. He’d never had any particular fear of serpents, but this one…

Thor was no prophet. He didn’t have his father’s gift of foresight. But looking at Loki’s bizarre child, Thor felt the same certainty he’d felt the first time he’d looked upon Mjolnir. It was like a heartbeat, or a drumbeat, tapping out a quick tempo in his mind that was impossible to ignore. Destiny. Fate. His future was somehow entwined with this creature’s.

He reached out, barely realizing he was doing it, fingers inching down towards the glittering black scales. Thor remembered Odin’s words when he had taken up Mjolnir, about how destiny could be as heavy as any shackle if he allowed it to be. Men had drowned under the weight of their destinies, Odin had warned.

It was only Loki that saved him from being bitten. Thor had been so caught up in reaching towards the hypnotic glimmer of the scales that he hadn’t seen the serpent’s head (the size of Thor’s fist) rise up from its coil. Loki yanked Thor hard, and the serpent’s fangs missed Thor’s hand by a mere hairsbreadth. Thor staggered backwards, landing halfway on top of Loki, and stared with alarm at the drop of venom that fell from the snake’s fang. 

It hit the floor and the stone beneath it _dissolved._

Thor looked back up at the snake and couldn’t help but notice how smug it looked, something it had clearly inherited from its father. Thor bared his teeth at it.

“Your son could use a lesson in manners, brother.”

“So could you,” Loki said, climbing to his feet and dusting himself off. “Not everyone enjoys having you paw at them. Anyway, I think he likes you.”

“Clearly.” Thor rolled his eyes and rose to his feet as well, keeping his eyes on the snake. It made no moves to attack further, just watched him with its slitted pupils and blood red eyes.

“I think I’ll call him Jormungandr,” Loki said. “Now stop pestering him.”

Thor snorted and turned his attention back to Fenrir, who’d taken a break in gnawing his way through the room to watch his uncle and brother. Thor scooped the wolfling up and scratched behind his ears.

“You’ll bring the room down on our heads, pup,” Thor said, rubbing his fingers through the baby fuzz that still coated Fenrir. “Come along, we’ll sit with your sister and teach you both about shapes.”

Fenrir wriggled madly, but upon seeing that he couldn’t escape, he settled into Thor’s arms and tilted his head to be scratched more. 

“Do you need any review yourself?” Loki teased. “I know memory was never your forte.”

“Don’t make me pummel you in front of your children,” Thor said, sitting down beside his brother. Hel looked up at him through a hank of rotted hair and gave a small wave. Thor smiled at her then watched with amusement as Fenrir squirmed until he could paw at the head of Mjolnir.

 **Second:** _I was a heavy heart to carry. My feet dragged across ground. And he took me to the river where he slowly let me drown._

This far up, the wind was biting and viciously cold, penetrating the armor and fur Thor had wrapped himself in. They were at the very edge of a massive cliff, one that dropped straight down into the ocean. The water hundreds of feet beneath them was roiling in the stormy weather, white-capped and agitated.

“Did we have to be so high?” Thor asked his father, raising an eyebrow. “The fall might well kill the serpent.”

“Then that would be one problem solved,” Odin said tightly, not looking at Thor. His eye was focused on Jormungandr, who’d been carried to the cliff’s edge after several hours of work. The snake was already so large that he couldn’t be kept indoors, and getting it uphill had been no easy task.

“Father!” Thor said, glancing around to see if Loki had overheard them. “I know that what you’ve foreseen upsets you, but-”

“The serpent will _kill you_ , Thor,” Odin said incredulously, turning to face his son. “Kill you with a single bite, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve killed it in revenge. Why won’t you take this seriously?”

“The future’s hardly set in stone, Father,” Thor said with a shrug. “Don’t you often say that prophecies and predictions change like the winds?”

“This is different,” Odin said, looking troubled. “I saw your death at the fangs of this creature, Thor. That should fill you with caution, if not fear.”

“A prince of Asgard fears nothing,” Thor said, tilting his chin up.

“I will not be swayed from this!” Odin snapped. “Now go find your brother and make sure he isn’t planning something.”

Thor could have pointed out that Loki was always planning something, but his father’s temper had been a tenuous thing as of late. So Thor sighed and weaved through the crowd of men gathered until he found Loki. His younger brother was sitting on a rock outcropping, watching the proceedings with a mask of cold disinterest.

“Don’t be sad, brother,” Thor said gently, leaning on the rock next to Loki’s legs. “Jormungandr will like living in the ocean. He can hunt whales.”

“My son is being thrown into the ocean because of you,” Loki said flatly.

“I asked Father not to do this,” Thor said. When Loki didn’t seem to be acknowledging him, Thor grabbed his leg and shook it gently. “I told him not to do this. He made his own choices, and it isn’t fair for you to hold me accountable for those choices. I won’t have this drive a wedge between us.”

Loki looked down at him for a long moment. His shoulders slumped and he let out a small huff of breath. “You rarely actually get to decide what will drive a wedge between yourself and other people, Thor.” He ran a hand through his hair with a tired sigh. “I suppose this is for the best. If he gets any larger, he’ll start to crush himself under his own weight. It may have come to this eventually. After what happened with Hel, though, I just…”

Thor still remembered Hel clinging to Loki’s legs, begging not to be sent away. The memory still saddened him, and he patted Loki’s knee gently. “She was rotting away. It was either send her to the realm of the dead or watch the living half of her die.”

“I know that!” Loki snapped. “It doesn’t make me feel any less guilty. And now Father’s talking about keeping Fenrir caged.”

“The pup ate an entire herd of cows,” Thor pointed out. He could see Odin’s point when it came to Fenrir. As much as Thor liked wrestling with the wolf and taking him on hunts, there wasn’t much reasoning with him when he was hungry. If Fenrir didn’t learn self-control soon, he’d be a danger to any Asgardian who crossed his path.

Whatever Loki was about to say was drowned out by a bellow travelling up and down the line of men. It was time to push the snake into the sea, forcibly if necessary. The plan was to push him in headfirst. It would be more of a dive than a belly-flop, that way, and it would keep the snake from pulling back if he decided to struggle.

“Are you going to say your goodbyes?” Thor asked.

“No,” Loki said, not moving from his perch. “We’ve spoken already.”

Thor nodded, pushed off from the rock, and headed towards the front of the line. Jormungandr’s head rested on the edge of the cliff, with what seemed like miles of glittering black scales stretching out behind him. He was so thick around that he came up to Thor’s waist even while lying flat on the ground. The men around him huddled in nervous clusters and did their best not to touch him.

“Move down the line,” Thor ordered as he approached the group near Jormungandr’s head.

“The king said that we were to push the snake in,” the biggest of the group, Eiríkr, said. After a pause, he added, “And that you weren’t to be near the serpent’s head.”

“But I’m ordering you to move down the line, so go,” Thor said firmly. “Now.”

Caught between a rock and a hard place, the group of men glanced uncertainly at each other before moving a few feet down. It left Thor alone at the edge of the cliff, Jormungandr’s huge head beside him.

“Just you and I, then, Thunderer,” came a deep, rumbling voice. Thor turned to find one of Jormungandr’s scarlet eyes looking at him. It was as big around as a dinner plate.

“It seems appropriate enough,” Thor said with a shrug. “You’ll like being a sea serpent. Moving around will be much easier, and you can battle kraken if you’re bored.”

“This is hardly for my benefit.” There was a sibilant hiss in Jormungandr’s voice, some vowels and ‘s’ noises being drawn out just slightly past what was normal. As Thor watched, the snake’s massive tongue flicked out to taste the air. “Your father fears for you.”

“I asked him not to do this,” Thor said, resting a hand on Jormungandr’s scales. They were smooth as glass and cold to the touch. “I’m sorry for it.”

“You don’t fear that I’ll kill you?” The snake’s voice was teasing, like he was very amused by Thor.

“I don’t fear death,” Thor said. “And I don’t fear you.”

“Oh?” Jormungandr seemed to ripple beneath Thor’s hand, muscles and scales sliding against each other. “Then I think you’re a fool. No offense, uncle.”

Thor smiled thinly. “You’re big, and very strong. But I’m stronger. And Mjolnir hits much harder than you ever will.”

Jormungandr’s tongue flicked out again, and his eyes were half-lidded. “For now, Thunderer. For now.”

“If you’re going to threaten me, do it when you’re a bit bigger.” With that, Thor turned on his heel and squatted down where Jormungandr’s head ended and his body began. He slid his arms underneath the snake, finding it hard to get a handle on the smooth, rounded scales. But he tightened his grip and lifted, pulling Jormungandr up. A cry rang out down the line of men, and from the corner of his eye Thor could see his fellow Asgardians reach out to lift the massive serpent as well.

Slowly, carefully, Thor walked to the edge of the cliff.

“Are you ready?” he grunted out, muscles straining a bit already. The snake was _heavy_.

Jormungandr laughed, his head dangling in midair. He had to be staring straight down at the ocean. “Goodbye for now. Let go.”

Thor released him and leapt back, just in time. Once Jormungandr began hurtling over the cliff, gravity took over and there was no stopping him. It was like standing in the center of a hurricane, the wind from Jormungandr’s passing nearly sucking Thor towards him. He dug in his heels and watched, Jormungandr nothing but a sleek, massive blur as he hurtled over the edge.

A good minute and a half passed as Jormungandr fell, nothing but scales and the wind. Just as Thor was beginning to wonder where Jormungandr’s tail was, he saw a huge black shape rushing at him in his peripheral vision. Instinct took over and Thor flattened himself to the ground, but the edge of Jormunandr’s tail caught him and sent him rolling towards the edge of the cliff. Thor tumbled head over heels, and it was only by luck that he grabbed the rocky edge of the cliff one-handed.

Dangling over the precipice, Thor stared down at the churning water. He wasn’t normally afraid of heights, but vertigo made his stomach roll and his vision blur as he looked down at the roiling waves hundreds of feet below him. He closed his eyes, swallowing down his nausea, and grabbed the ledge with his other hand to make sure he didn’t slip. He glanced down one more time.

Jormungandr’s head was half in and half out of the water, like a hunting crocodile. It was all Thor could see of the serpent, but it was enough. His bloody-red eyes were looking up at Thor, watching with fascination. When it became clear that Thor wasn’t going to come tumbling into the water with him, Jormungandr blinked and ducked his head into the ocean, disappearing entirely. Thor swallowed and hauled himself up onto the cliff.

His father was rushing towards him, Loki hot on his heels, both of them easily outpacing the other Asgardians in their worry. Loki, upon seeing Thor, teleported to his side immediately.

“Are you all right?” Loki demanded, practically shaking Thor. “Thor! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, don’t worry,” Thor said, smiling to reassure his brother. “No harm done.”

Loki looked unconvinced.

 

 **Third:** _Pull me out the water, cold and blue. I open my eyes and I see that it's you_

“I cannot believe you cut the head off my ox and then made us row all the way out here,” Hymir groused.

Thor was in no mood to hear it. “And _I_ cannot believe that you would not even give us bait to fish with and are being such a woman about this.”

Thor went on fishing trips to feel _peaceful_ , damn it. If he had known Hymir was planning to moan and whine and be a spendthrift, he would have just stayed home. Honestly, though, the entire trip had probably been doomed from the start. Thor’s entire family was quarreling back at the palace, and so he had begun his vacation in a terrible mood. When he’d finally arrived at Hymir’s village, it was to discover that his often-miserly friend was in an equally foul mood and was refusing to provide bait. Thor may have lost his temper a bit, lobbing off the head of one of Hymir’s oxen, but honestly. Hymir was being a terrible host. Besides, the bits and pieces of the ox were making wonderful bait, especially after Thor had demanded that Hymir row out farther into the ocean in hope of a larger catch.

“That was my favorite ox, you know,” Hymir muttered. He and Thor were sitting as far as possible from each other.

“What was I supposed to use as bait, Hymir?” Thor snapped. If getting drunk and gorging himself on whale meat tonight didn’t make him feel better, he was going to be forced to accept that nothing about this trip was working out as planned. “Should I have just conjured some out of thin air?”

Hymir was making the mulish, stubborn face that meant he knew he was wrong but was too angry to admit it. Perhaps hoping to change the subject, he said, “You have something on your line.”

Thor had noticed the tugging, but ignored it. “No, no, I’d quite like you to answer the question. How should I have created bait? Should I have just wished very hard for some?”

“I will throw you out of the--Yggdrasil’s branches!” Hymir, who’d been perched on the bow, was nearly thrown into the water when whatever was on Thor’s line jerked violently and wrenched the boat to one side.

Thor grinned. Whatever this was, he bet it was going to be delicious.

Half an hour of fighting didn’t decrease his desire to eat his aquatic opponent in the least. When he finally saw its shadow in the water below him, he dug his heels into the floor of the boat and _pulled._ That was enough to get it out of the water, and that was also the moment when Thor’s appetite disappeared entirely.

A massive black head attached to an equally huge neck arched up out of the water. Thor didn’t even have the words for how large it was. He’d seen mountains that were shorter than this creature. It could crack the Bifrost with one slam of its body. It was the first time he had ever looked at something and thought 'I wonder if Mjolnir could even hurt that.'

It looked like a snake, but snakes simply did not grow this large, and the thought of there being miles more of it under the water was not something Thor wanted to contemplate. Red, reptilian eyes that were as wide around as tree trunks blinked down at him. In the corner of its mouth, so small that it was almost comical, was Thor’s fishing hook. It wasn’t until it opened his mouth to reveal fangs several times longer than Thor was tall that the Thunderer realized he knew this particular monster. He was related to it.

“Jormungandr,” Thor said flatly, his heart thudding in his chest. “You’ve grown.”

It had been a century since Thor had helped toss his nephew into the sea, both to help Jormungandr and to appease Odin’s constant worrying. Thor had thought of the serpent occasionally since then, but never once had he assumed that Jormungandr would continue growing. Not like this. Not so much.

“Thor,” Jormungandr hissed out, his voice so deep and low that it made the water itself tremble. It was like hearing an earthquake speak. “You have pulled me up from the ocean floor.”

“I thought you were a whale,” Thor said, keeping a polite smile plastered on his face even as he bent down to pick up Mjolnir from where it sat on the floor of the boat. Beside him, Hymir looked like he was about to start screaming in terror. Thor couldn’t blame him. “My sincerest apologies. We won’t fish here again if it disturbs you.”

Jormungandr cocked his head. It was like seeing a mountain move. Thor felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, as if lightning was about to strike. His grip tightened on Mjolnir.

“I think I would like to take you with me,” Jormungandr rumbled, opening his mouth even wider in some hideous parody of a grin.

“No, thank you,” Thor responded, planning the best way to get out of this without getting Hymir or himself killed.

“I was never asking.” With that, Jormungandr lunged forward, fangs outstretched.

Thor rocketed out of the boat so hard that the wood beneath his feet actually cracked, and he met the serpent in midair. He aimed Mjolnir at Jormungandr's nearest fang, but the snake ducked and Thor ended up slamming the hammer into his nose. Jormungandr rocked back, looking at least slightly stunned by the blow, which was a relief in and of itself. For a terrible moment, Thor had worried that perhaps Mjolnir really wouldn't have any effect on something so huge.

Still hovering in the air, Thor ducked weaved around Jormungandr even as the snake tried to wrap around him. It was strange, being the small one in the fight. Thor had fought plenty of enemies who were physically larger, but battles were Thor was actually the weaker party were rare. The odds had certainly never been quite this skewed. It was strange. It was...exciting.

Thor shook his head, landing another blow on Jormungandr's neck and barely avoiding the snake's snapping jaws. Now was not the time to be lost in the excitement of the fight. Jormungandr could easily kill Hymir, and anything else on the surface that struck his fancy.

"Why fight this, Thunderer?" Jormungandr hissed. "You know I'm fated to have you."

"My father's been wrong before," Thor said, whirling and landing on a coil to slam Mjolnir down on the thick scales. Blows like that had cracked stone easily, but Jormungandr just hissed angrily and swung another coil at Thor, nearly knocking him into the water.

"Not about this," Jormungandr said, snapping at the air where Thor had been seconds ago. "I can feel it in my bones. I'll wrap 'round you and swallow you down. You won't escape. You will become a part of me."

Jormungandr sounded unsettlingly confident, and Thor felt claustrophobic with a small mountain range of coils breaking the surface of the water to box him in. The serpent's body was everywhere, glistening and black with scales harder than rock.

"Thor!" he heard Hymir shout from far below him. "The line is cut!"

Thor understood immediately. If he could hit Jormungandr hard enough, the disoriented serpent would likely slip back below the water for a time. With the fishing line in his mouth no longer attached to anything, he wouldn't be able to tug the boat under with him. Thor swallowed, gripped Mjolnir tighter, and flew higher.

Jormungandr seemed to catch on to his plan quickly, and he stretched himself out after Thor with his mouth open and his fangs dripping venom. Thor forced himself to fly faster, more quickly than he'd ever gone before. The wind pulled violently at his hair and at his clothes, and the air around him grew thin and cold. It wasn't until he could barely breathe, though, that Thor finally stopped. For one long moment, he hung suspended in the air, looking out over the vast blue ocean. From this high up, the boat and Hymir were too small to see; nothing stood out to his eyes but the land, the sea, and the endless black coils of Jormungandr below him. Waiting.

Then Thor let himself plummet, gravity yanking him downwards even faster than he'd ascended. He had to close his eyes against the force of the wind, though he knew it didn't matter. Jormungandr would lunge for him and ensure that they impacted. The air seemed to almost shriek around him, the sound growing louder and louder. He risked his vision to crack open an eyelid and saw that Jormungandr was rushing up towards him, his fangs bone white and the inside of his mouth blood red.

Seconds before the two of them collided, Thor felt as though the air itself had reached some kind of breaking point because of his speed. When Thor pushed past that point, a deafening roar erupted all around him, the sounding nearly bursting Thor's eardrums. (He would learn later, much later, that the Midgardians called it a sonic boom.) Then he hit Jormungandr, and the world was nothing but a maelstrom of blood, scales, and water.

Everything was dark when Thor regained enough sense to look around. The water was black around him, and he could feel the occasional brush of scales. Thor could hold his breath for hours, but that wasn't what he was worried about. The serpent was still alive, and Thor needed to be out of the water before it came to its sense as well.

 _Follow the bubbles,_ Thor thought woozily, his head pounding and his eyes burning from the salt water. It was common for someone knocked into the water to lose all sense of up and down, but air would always rise to the surface. Thor breathed out, feeling the bubbles rushing upwards past his face, and swam after them.

His attack had knocked he and Jormungandr deep in the ocean, and it took several desperate minutes of kicking before Thor was close enough to the surface to see the sunlight. He had hung onto Mjolnir the entire time, he realized distantly. Good. That hammer was his life.

When he finally broke the surface several minutes later, it was to find an empty ocean around him. Thor felt a moment of panic, wondering if Hymir had been drowned, before he saw a speck on the horizon. He forced himself into the air again, even though every muscle and bone in his body was screaming that he needed to stay exactly where he was and never move again.

Flying closer revealed Hymir, clinging to the wreckage of the capsized boat. Around him, whole schools of fish were floating belly up and dead, the water around them discolored from Jormungandr's venom.

"Thor?" Hymir mouthed, looking bedraggled and awestruck. It took Thor a moment to realize that Hymir was actually speaking, and he just couldn't hear it. Flying so fast must have temporarily damaged his hearing. At least, he hoped it was temporary.

"I cannot hear at the moment, my friend" Thor said, his voice feeling like nothing more than a rasp. "Take my hand. I'll get us back to shore."

 **Fourth:** _And when we come for you, we'll be dressed up all in blue, with the ocean in our arms. Kiss your eyes and kiss your palms._

Thor had been vomiting ocean water for several hours now, and he was starting to become legitimately concerned. How much could he possibly regurgitate before it became dangerous? This was not like being sick after a night of drinking; this was much worse.

He had no doubt that Loki would have been mocking him, except Loki had needed to stop several times to vomit as well. 

“I think there was something in that meat,” he moaned after one such trip into the bushes to retch, black hair disheveled.

“Don’t you dare start complaining,” Thor snarled in response. “I drank an _ocean_ , you can handle a few cows’ worth of meat.”

“I do think Thor ended up with the worse end of things,” said their traveling companion, Thialfi. Thialfi had lost a footrace against Thought, but the worst that had come out of that was a short sprint that amounted to nothing. Loki, on the other hand, had managed to gorge himself like a snake on several dozen pounds of meat, and Thor had guzzled more water than he was aware he could hold, nearly broken his back and snapped his muscles, and then soundly lost a wrestling match. It had not been a good journey. On this, Thor and Loki could agree.

“You shut your mouth, peasant,” Loki snapped, his head popping up to glare at Thialfi over the tops of the bushes. “You don’t get to speak! You did not eat a herd of cattle!”

Then Loki went back to vomiting. 

And so the rest of the afternoon went, with Loki throwing up and Thor groaning at the terrible ache in his muscles when he was not vomiting himself. Thialfi, not wanting to incur their wrath, stood with the horses and tried not to look bored while all of this was happening. When it was finally time to make camp for the night, Thor had never been so glad to lie down in his life.

“I’m so full of regrets,” he mused. “We should never have come here.”

“I think this is a lesson about trusting people who share my name,” Loki said, curled in a small, miserable ball on the bedding next to Thor.

“Or trusting people named Loki at all,” Thialfi suggested.

Loki hissed at him and turned over, putting his back to both of them. Thor sighed to keep himself from agreeing with Thialfi. The fact that Utgard-Loki had shared his brother’s name should have been the first sign that the giant would be up to endless trickery. 

Despite having wrestled old age, drank an ocean, and lifted a coil of the Midgard Serpent (who Thor was praying had not noticed any of what was happening), he could not force himself to sleep. Thor lay in the dark, listening to the ocean waves crash against the shore. The sound was hypnotic, unceasing, and Thor could swear he heard the same churning inside himself. He closed his eyes, trying to let the sound lull him to sleep, but instead he drifted in a strange, in between state for a torturously long time.

When he heard the singing, he thought he was dreaming. It was only when he opened his eyes and the sound still persisted that he realized it was real.

It was not singing, not really, but it took a moment for the word to come to Thor. Harmonizing. The notes soared and sank with the crashing of the waves, wordless but beautiful. It was a male voice, deep and endless, like the waves it was mimicking. 

Thor rose into a crouch, slipping into a tunic silently and hanging Mjolnir at his belt. Beside him, Loki grunted and stirred, but Thor just patted his brother’s shoulder before he slipped out of the tent barefoot and walked towards the ocean to investigate.

The moon was full, shining brightly down on the long stretch of beach. Thor gave a nod to Mani, high in the sky, thankful that his light was strong enough that Thor wasn’t stumbling half-blind. The voice seemed to be coming from the ocean, so Thor walked to the waves, the sand sucking at his feet.

The water was frigid, but Thor had suffered through worse. He waded out until the water came up to his knees, the sound growing louder all the while as he dug his toes into the loose, soft sand. A part of him was tempted to just close his eyes and listen, but instead he called out, “Who’s there?”

The singing faded away, leaving Thor momentarily worried that he had startled the singer into fleeing. But then a fog rose up from the ocean, thick and white as the clouds, and a figure coalesced from the mist within it. Thor kept his arms hanging loosely at his sides, ready to attack if need be. 

When the figure was close enough for Thor to actually see, it did little to reassure the god of thunder that this wasn’t a foe. The creature had the basic shape of a man, though his limbs seemed just slightly too long, his neck arched just a bit too much. The skin along his front was white, shockingly white, pale as a fish’s belly. But Thor could see edges of a blue so dark it was almost black curling around the creature’s hips and ribs, coating the back of his arms and legs. As he drew closer, Thor could see lines across his skin, faint and nearly impossible to see even in the bright moonlight. _Scales_ , he realized. It was a pattern of scales.

When the man was just outside of arm’s length, Thor said, “That’s close enough.”

“Why so unfriendly, Thunderer?” said the man, in a voice that Thor would have recognized anywhere. It was frighteningly deep, a voice fit to shake the oceans. “After all, you tried so hard to gain my attention today.”

“What sorcery is this?” Thor asked, gesturing to Jormungandr’s human form. The strangest thing was that now, aware of who he was looking at, Thor could see hints of Loki in Jormungandr. The slick black hair, the shape of his face, and the way his lips twisted as he sneered were all painfully familiar to anyone who knew his father, and Thor wondered if it was intentional. How much control did Jormungandr have over the human shape he took?

“Just a small trick,” Jormungandr said, echoing one of his father’s favorite catchphrases. But his eyes were the same as ever, bloody red and reptilian, and when he smiled his mouth was full of needle sharp fangs. The similarity to Loki only went so far. “Sometimes I like to see what goes on in the world above my oceans. In this case, I was curious as to why some fool was trying to lift me. Imagine my surprise when that fool was you.”

“A giant named Utgard-Loki, no relation to your father, had challenged us,” Thor explained with a sigh. “He challenged me to lift a cat, and was greatly amused when I could not. It was only later that he explained that the ‘cat’ was actually you, and he had cast an illusion to fool us all.”

Jormungandr raised an eyebrow, gliding closer. “Did you not find it a little strange that a cat was sleeping in the middle of a beach?”

“Have you spent much time around cats?”

“I ate a few while living in Asgard, but other than that, no.”

“Ah. Well, cats will sleep anywhere they please. It was far from the strangest thing that had befallen us on this trip.” Thor was torn between the urge to stand his ground and the instinct to keep Jormungandr in sight as the snake-turned-man circled him. 

“Would this strangeness you speak of also be the reason that my ocean seems to have grown a bit more shallow?” Jormungandr didn’t sound angry, just amused. He reached out a hand towards Thor’s shoulder, his fingers bone thin and tipped with frighteningly sharp nails.

Thor deftly stepped aside. “Yes. I…drank it.” At Jormungandr’s look, Thor added, “I was told it was mead! And it was spelled to taste like mead. Not very good mead, though.”

“This has been quite a day for you,” Jormungandr said, still wearing that needle sharp smile. His circling brought him in front of Thor again, much closer than he had been before. This close, Thor could easily see the lines of his scales, giving lie to the human skin he wore. “I think I’m owed some kind of payment for the irritation you’ve caused.”

Thor smiled pleasantly and responded, “Take it up with Utgard-Loki, then, World Serpent. Any harm I did was due to his trickery.”

“He has nothing I could want,” Jormungandr said, bringing a hand up to tap as his lips as if in thought.

Quick as a snake striking (and how appropriate), Jormungandr lashed out, his fingernails raking across Thor’s chest. The blow opened up four deep, thin wounds in Thor’s skin, and the pain was immediate. He staggered away, swinging Mjolnir at the spot where Jormungandr’s head had been just seconds ago. Thor snarled in irritation, because that blow should have hit, and swung again. Another miss. 

He was slowing down, he realized in horror. Numbness was spreading through his body from the spot where Jormungandr’s claws had struck. He had been poisoned. 

Thor’s heart started pounding, alarm spiking through him. No, this wasn’t supposed to happen, at least not until Ragnarok. And this was not the end of all things, it was a normal night in an unremarkable year. But denying it certainly didn’t slow down the poison, and Thor could feel himself growing dizzy and uncoordinated. He fell to his knees in the water, barely able to keep upright.

“Don’t worry, Thunderer,” Jormungandr said, voice a mocking coo. “Our deaths are entwined, and I’ve no intention on dying tonight. I just want to _keep_ you.”

“I’m not a pet to be kept,” Thor snarled, trying and failing to jerk away as Jormungandr wove his razor sharp fingers though Thor’s hair.

“No, you are so much more,” Jormungandr said, yanking Thor’s head back to look into his eyes. “You are my death, and so you belong to me. You know it. You heard me singing and you came to me.”

Thor felt dizzy, only staying upright because of Jormungandr’s grip on his hair. The serpent’s eyes were red, so red, and Thor felt a strong urge to just slide beneath the water and rest until the heaviness in his limbs faded. But he would never surface if he did that. Mjolnir. He needed to do something with Mjolnir, what was it?

“I’ll swallow you down and feel every movement as you fight,” Jormungandr purred in his ear. “We’ll do this forever, you and I, the sky and sea.”

There was a blast of bright green, and Jormungandr was knocked backwards violently, taking a large chunk of Thor’s hair with him. Thor tumbled forward, just barely catching himself before he slipped under the water completely. On his hands and knees, he looked up through the fringe of his soaking hair to see Loki standing at the shore, bare-chested with magic blazing at his hands.

“Get away from him, Jormungandr,” Loki hissed.

“Father,” Jormungandr growled in response, recovering from the blast of magic and darting forward to wrap his hands around Thor’s throat. As weak as Thor was, he couldn’t struggle away. He could barely keep his grip on Mjolnir. He needed to do something, needed-

Jormungandr’s claws settled on Thor’s the skin above Thor’s jugular vein. “That’s close enough, I think. Another dose and he’ll die.” He pulled Thor back against him, the god’s head resting on the skin of his stomach.

It was cool, Thor thought woozily. Cool and smooth and solid, like a stone that had been in a river.

“You want him alive,” Loki said, standing still just where the waves met the shore nonetheless. Behind him, Thor could see Thialfi stagger out of the tent, eyes wide and horrified.

“I’ll retrieve him from Hel if I must,” Jormungandr said, claws stroking gently against Thor’s throat.

“Not if I arrive there first,” Loki snapped.

Thor’s head rolled back, staring past Jormungandr into the night sky. His thoughts were disjointed, not connecting to anything at all and not at all helpful. The moon was so bright it nearly hurt, and Thor couldn’t see the wolves that chased it. Wasn’t that the way of all wolves, though? Silent and unnoticed until they struck.

Focus, he had to focus, Mjolnir-

“Would you really lead the Allfather’s armies into my sister’s realm?” Jormungandr sneered.

“I would lead them into my _daughter’s_ realm to retrieve my brother, if she refused to give him back outright,” Loki snarled. He was pale as the moon, Thor thought dizzily. Except for his hands, which blazed green. The light flashing reminded him of something. “Now let go of him.”

“He is mine,” Jormungandr laughed, running one claw up Thor’s chin so gently that it almost tickled. “And you cannot protect him from me forever.”

What? What did that mean? Loki had been protecting Thor? Thinking was hard, like trying to run through mud, and Thor had an overwhelming urge to just sink back against Jormungandr and sleep. But he had to stay awake, damn it. Had Loki been communicating with Jormungandr without anyone else knowing? Is that why they were facing off like old enemies instead of long-lost family?

“He is _mine_ ,” Loki snarled in response, “and you’ll never have him.”

The magic at his hands flashed, so hot that it was white, and Thor thought of-

Lightning.

That moment of clarity gave Thor a surge of energy, and he slurred out, “Loki, get back!” He wasn’t sure if Loki comprehended a word of it, because his tongue felt fat and useless in his mouth, but Loki seemed to understand the gist of it. His brother threw himself back, away from the water, and Thor surged upwards, his back arching as he cried out at the sky.

Lightning arced from nowhere, blinding bright, and it struck like a hammer. Jormungandr, perhaps realizing what Thor was about to do, let go of him and lunged away, but it wasn’t fast enough. There was a crack, the smell of burning skin mixing with ozone, and a scream. Thor watched the electricity crackle across the surface of the water and over his skin, not harming him. Lightning was his element as surely as water was Jormungandr’s, and he bared his teeth in a smile as he muttered, “Sky and sea.”

He had the distinct sense that something heard him, even if Jormungandr was nowhere to be found.

Then he was being yanked out of the water, Loki’s magic wrapping around him and pulling him up onto the shore.

“Thor, look at me!” Loki ordered, grabbing his chin and looking down into his eyes. “Thialfi, damn it, bring us some kind of light. Thor, can you speak? Can you hear me?”

“Wh’r’s Jrmungndr?” Thor slurred.

“I assume he’s crawled back beneath the sea to lick his wounds,” Loki sneered. He smoothed some of Thor’s hair back from his face. With a small smile, he added, “That was brilliant, Thor.”

Thor beamed up at him, as best he could, and Loki rolled his eyes. “Good to see you’re not poisoned enough to preen.”

“Is he going to be all right?” Thialfi asked, returning with a torch and kneeling down next to Loki to examine the gouges in Thor’s chest.

“He didn’t intend to kill him,” Loki said, poking at the gashes curiously. “I think the poison should work itself from his system.”

“How…” Thor’s eyelids were heavy, almost as heavy as his limbs, but he managed to slur out, “he look’d like us.”

Loki actually looked embarrassed, closing his eyes briefly. “When he was younger, I taught him a trick. Showed him how to cast his mind out and give it form for a short while.”

“Good job,” Thor sighed, twitching his hand at Loki. It was the closest he could get to a punch.

Loki rolled his eyes. “Oh, I should have just let him eat you.”

 **Fifth:** _No home, I don't want shelter. No calm, nothing to keep me from the storm. And you can't hold me down ‘cause I belong to the hurricane. It's gonna blow us all away._

Thor closed his eyes to the sight of Jane’s horrified face and the hot Midgardian sun. Dying didn’t hurt as much as he’d thought it would. The pain was bleary, unfocused, and all Thor really felt was peace as the life drained out of him. Everything was slowing down, and he was slowing down too. He had done his duty. He could die with honor.

When he opened his eyes again, the world around him was blue and dark. For a moment he thought that perhaps the Destroyer was standing over him, but no. This was not on Earth at all. He sat up warily, surprised to discover that he was not in pain. He was even more surprised when he looked down and saw the long, bloody gashes that the Destroyer had raked across his chest. When he touched his ribs, he could feel them move, shattered and jagged inside of him. And yet, he felt no pain.

He narrowed his eyes and tried to understand where he was. This certainly did not look like the golden halls of Valhalla, nor the wide fields of Fólkvangr. But it was also not Hel’s realm, either. The air itself was blue, and every movement Thor made felt slightly slowed, as if he was moving through water. Fog spread in all directions, the thick mist keeping Thor from seeing more than a few feet no matter which direction he looked. When he glanced upwards, trying to find what illuminated this strange world, he realized that the sky was fractured and rippling, like he was staring up at it from the bottom of a lake.

Or perhaps not a lake. Thor reached out and swiped his hand through the thickest patch of mist near him and brought the water droplets that collected there up to his mouth to taste. Sure enough, the water was salty. He knew what place this was, now.

Loki had told him once about the roads between the realms, called the Gray Paths by magic users who knew of them. He’d said they were strange, ever-shifting pathways that not even Heimdall could see. They were uncharted and uninhabited by any, and wandering into one by mistake could very easily result in getting lost for an eternity. Loki had said these roads went places that normal roads could not, such as through mountains or buildings or the oceans themselves. One such Gray Path ran straight through Odin’s hall in Asgard, Loki had said, smirking at the perturbed expression on Thor’s face.

Thor closed his eyes. He had been such a fool to trust his brother so completely. Loki had never been the most stable of people, and Thor had not had the eyes to see how unwell Loki truly was until he’d already been banished to Midgard. But he would sort out just what had driven Loki to these terrible lengths, once he found his way back to the known realms. Thor squared his shoulders and climbed to his feet, wincing as he felt the bones of his spine slide against each other where they had cracked and splintered.

He should be paralyzed at the very least. Whatever magic was keeping him moving and taking away his pain was unknown to him. Loki had not mentioned the Gray Paths being roads for the dead, or bringing the defeated back to life. Perhaps someone had brought him here and worked some spell on him? 

Thor called out warily, “Hello? If you’re out there, show yourself.”

“Thunderer,” came a deep voice, so low that its rumble shook the earth Thor stood on. 

Thor’s heart sped up and his hand instinctively reached for Mjolnir. He knew that voice, could not possibly forget it, and he could not fathom what Jormungandr’s connection to all of this madness was. Did the snake have magic beyond being able to cast small illusions? He was Loki’s child, it would not be out of the question, but what was he doing _here_?

Thinking of Loki sent another pang of misery through Thor, and he said, “Show yourself, serpent. Did my brother send you here to finish his work?”

“My father?” Jormungandr sounded unsure for the first time that Thor could ever recall. Then there was something like a shout, furious and low, and the earth beneath Thor shook so violently that he was thrown to the ground. “What has he done?”

“Show yourself,” Thor said again, climbing unsteadily to his feet again. “I’m not going to have a conversation with a cloud.”

There was silence, and then Jormungandr peered out from the fog, his massive red eyes taller than the largest frost giant. Thor could feel it when he breathed, the air whistling past like a sharp autumn breeze. “Explain what is going on. Now.”

He was so huge, and Thor had never felt quite so exposed. It was like a massive, living hill had slithered out of the darkness, and Thor knew somehow that the unimaginable stretch of Jormungandr’s body was circling him.

Shuddering, he crossed his arms across his still-mangled chest and explained the story of his banishment. As he recounted the trip to Jotunheim, his shoulders sagged as he realized just how obliviously he had played into his brother’s hands. How long had Loki been planning this? When had things gotten so bad between them? Had Thor’s mind really been so crowded with his own ambitions that he couldn’t see his brother’s slow descent into darkness?

Throughout the tale, Jormungandr was silent, watching Thor with all the frightening focus that a snake could muster. When it was over, Jormungandr’s tone was low and worryingly calm when he asked, “So you are most certainly dead, then?”

“Er, yes.”

Jormungandr let out a scream of rage that seemed to shake the cosmos, his fury shaking the earth and making the air itself vibrate. His mouth opened impossibly wide, taller than a building, and his fangs were shockingly white amidst all the darkness. Thor tumbled to the ground, hands over his ears and moaning in pain. To mortal ears, the sound was unbearably loud, and the force of it alone was enough to make him writher. He wondered if he would be able to hear after this.

“How dare he!” Jormungandr roared, oblivious to Thor’s distress. Thor was vaguely reassured that he could still hear, however. “How dare he steal what is mine! He’ll pay for this, kin or not!”

“I am sorry that my banishment and death are an inconvenience to you.” Thor didn’t use sarcasm often, but when he did, he made it count. Despite his voice being little more than a squeak against Jormungandr’s roar, it was enough to catch the snake’s attention.

“This will not do,” was all he said, staring down at Thor with those bright, cunning eyes.

“Send me on to Valhalla or Fólkvangr,” Thor ordered, wobbling to his feet. There was blood on his hands, leaking from his ears. Presumably, whatever magic was keeping him alive despite his injuries was also at work now. He squared his shoulders and looked up at the black, looming shape of Jormungandr’s head. If they had been on Asgard, it would have been enough to blot out most of the stars. “I died in battle. I’ve earned a warrior’s afterlife. You cannot keep me here.”

Jormungandr was silent for so long that Thor worried the serpent was in fact planning to trap him in this in-between state, neither alive nor dead. It was not as though there was anything he could do to stop him, besides possibly try to escape when Jormungandr’s attention was elsewhere.

Finally, the serpent spoke. “What if there was a way to send you back?”

Hope caught in Thor’s chest like a spark from a fire, bright and invigorating. He stepped forward, no longer worried about his injuries. “Then do it! Now!”

Jormungandr seemed taken aback, rearing up slightly. “Are you really so afraid of death?”

Thor sneered up at him. His ego had taken a mighty bruising these past few days, but he would not be called a coward. “Loki is not well, and he now sits on the throne of Asgard with no one there to control him. He just tried to kill me. He just succeeded at killing me. He needs to be stopped before he hurts someone or himself.”

“Oh? And this has nothing to do with you wanting to be king once more, hmm?” Jormungandr sounded smugger than he had any right to be.

Thor’s shoulders slumped. He looked away and responded, “I am not fit to be king.”

Jormungandr huffed out a surprised breath, but Thor was not in the mood to have this conversation right now. “And that is not the point. You said there was a way to send me back. Do it.”

“It will not be easy.”

“Liar,” Thor spat, tired of being yanked around like a puppet on a string. “You can keep me from the afterlife easily enough, you can send me back.”

“I am the Midgard Serpent,” Jormungandr said, his tone a sneer. It was hard to judge his moods, given that his face did not move as an Asgardian’s did, but his voice was revealing. “I encircle all parts of this realm, the physical and beyond. It is not hard to stop a spirit on their way out. It is considerably harder to defy death itself.”

“But you can.” And Thor did not doubt it. Loki’s blood ran through Jormungandr’s veins, and there was nothing Loki could not accomplish. _For good or ill_ , Thor thought, looking down to hide the pain that crossed his face. His brother, his laughing, lying Loki had _killed_ him.

“I want something in return,” the serpent said, drawing himself up imposingly. It wasn’t necessary, since even flat on the ground he towered over Thor, but the move had its intended effect. Thor could not possibly forget which of them had the greater power in that moment.

“What?” Thor asked, raising his chin to show he was not afraid. He would not be cowed. “I have nothing worth giving you at the moment, but if I return to Asgard-”

“I want you.”

It was not the answer Thor was expecting, and he tilted his head in confusion, waiting for the serpent to finish. When he did not, Thor prompted, “Want me to what?”

Jormungandr’s chuckle was low and dark, in a way that unsettled Thor greatly. “For now, just your time. You return to Asgard, sort out your business with my father, and then return to me. For a week, you’ll be mine.”

Thor glared. “So you would return me back to life only to kill me yourself?”

Jormungandr laughed, the sound booming like a thunderclap. “Your death is already mine, Thunderer. Bringing it early would only be robbing myself.”

The snake moved unexpectedly, coiling around Thor in a loose circle. While Thor still had plenty of room to move within the coil (he could likely have done gymnastics if he was so inclined), he still felt claustrophobic, surrounded by scales on all sides. From above him, Jormungandr said, “I just want a bit of your life, that’s all.”

Thor looked upwards to discover that his view of what passed for the sky was completely obscured by Jormungandr. The snake’s eyes were like twin moons in the sky, bloody red and focused entirely on him. 

“It…it would do no good anyway,” Thor said after a moment, feeling frozen under that gaze. “Loki would simply kill me again. I’m no stronger than a Midgardian, now.”

“Your hammer.”

“I cannot lift it.” And wasn’t that a unique and terrible humiliation, to have to admit aloud?

“It calls to you.” Jormungandr tilted his head, as if listening to something only he could hear. “Whatever curse your fool of a father has laid on it has been undone.”

Thor felt something in him lighten. “Did you-”

“No. Something you did, perhaps.” Jormungandr looked back down at him. “So nothing stands in your way now, Thor. What is your answer?”

Thor shook his head. He was not saying no, but he didn’t understand. “If you don’t want to kill me, then what on earth do you want me for?”

Jormungandr was silent again, silent for so long that Thor thought he wouldn’t answer at all. When he finally spoke, his answer was annoyingly cryptic. “We are bound together by our deaths. As I said, I just want a few days of your life.”

And then the scales were moving, tightening around him like the walls of a building closing in. Thor instinctively grabbed the wall of scales nearest to him and scrambled up them, but the footing was slick and treacherous. Despite that, he nearly escaped before the scales closed around him completely. He was trapped then, his legs pinned together and his arms pressed against his sides. No matter how he struggled, there was no give at all. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to wiggle loose even if he’d had his powers. Warily, he looked up at Jormungandr’s massive head, looming close. The snake’s breath ruffled his hair when he breathed.

“A few days of your life to do what I want with you.” Jormungandr closed his eyes, and suddenly his human form (or what passed for human) was kneeling next to Thor on his own scales, his knees level with Thor’s shoulders. He ran his sharp-tipped fingers across Thor’s jaw, laughing when that provoked a glare. “You’ll come to me for a week, every year.”

“Every decade.” 

“Ha!”

“Every five years, then,” Thor sighed. “I have duties to attend to, serpent, and people will question me if I am sneaking off once a year.”

Jormungandr tilted his head, the movement remarkably snakelike. “Very well.”

“And you aren’t to kill me, or work any witchcraft on me,” Thor added. “Or anything else that will affect me beyond the week I’m with you.”

Jormungandr pursed his lips, looking irritated, but then nodded. “Fine.”

Thor was tempted to keep adding more terms, more limits, but he could see Jormungandr’s impatience now that he wore a human face. Thor needed to make this deal. He thought of Jane and her friends, his own friends. He thought of Asgard, Midgard, and all the nine realms.

Mother and Father.

Loki.

Thor closed his eyes and nodded. “Fine.”

Jormungandr smiled, a rather terrifying expression, and suddenly the world blurred around Thor. The coils loosened and he fell. He could see Jormungandr’s head falling next to him, his muscles seemingly slack and unresponsive. Thor never hit the ground, though. There was a rush of energy filling him, _slithering_ through him, strange and foreign. He opened his eyes to see the clear blue sky and Mjolnir hurtling towards him.

When he caught his hammer, he was filled with an entirely different energy. It was bright and crackling, so familiar he wanted to weep. It filled him to bursting. His armor slid across his skin, his cape hung from his shoulders, and he was finally himself once again. Thor saw the Destroyer and smiled. 

The storm around him raged.

 **End:** _The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out. You left me in the dark. No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight, in the shadow of your heart._

Thor thought of Midgardian poetry, here at the end of the world. He’d never had much of an interest in the poetry of any of the realms, except for the tales of heroes, but Bruce Banner (dead for so long that all Thor remembered of him was his bright eyes and the deep green color of his skin when he changed) had kept books lying around. He had claimed they calmed him down, and Thor had often flipped through them idly.

Strange, what half-remembered verses still survived in Thor’s memory when all the rest of Midgard was rubble and ash.

‘The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;  
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;  
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.  
For nothing now can ever come to any good.’

The sky was poisoned, Jormungandr’s venom weaving through the water vapor until every inch of the heavens held a black, oily sheen. The sun and moon had been chased down and torn to bits; Thor had seen Mani’s body himself, blood streaked black across snowy white skin.

Around him was a battlefield, the bodies of dead gods and monsters covering it like snowfall. Everything was the dark red of spilled blood. The branches of Yggdrasil themselves were cracking and crumbling as the universe wound itself down.

Thor wanted to cry. He wanted to scream. Instead, he looked for Jormungandr. The serpent was not hard to find; Thor had mistaken him for a mountain range at first, but then he had raised his head up, a familiar silhouette in the sky. Thor closed his eyes and flew.

For a moment, suspended above the battlefield, Thor thought about just leaving. Just flying away someplace where he could be alone and waiting until it was all over. But that would solve nothing, and Thor was no coward. There was no reason to survive this fight; he had nothing to go back to.

His mother had been torn to shreds by an ice giant, hair golden even as it soaked through with blood. His father had been swallowed whole by a wolf, by his own grandchild, with the screams of Sleipnir still echoing in Thor’s mind. Sif, Hogun, Fandral, Volstagg, they had all fallen before Thor could even reach them, bloody and mangled and together even in death.

Asgard burned. Midgard was long dead, as were all of his friends there. Even their graves were nothing but ashes and dust now.

And Loki…

“Hello,” Thor said, landing in front of Jormungandr and offering a watery smile.

“Hello, Thunderer,” Jormungandr said, his voice a familiar rumble.

“I…” Thor did not know what to say. What _could_ he say? He was sorry? He was angry? He wished that none of this had ever happened? All seemed too obvious.

“I know,” was all Jormungandr said.

Thor nodded, closed his eyes, and launched himself at the serpent. 

The scales were so familiar, harder than armor and cool like a spring breeze. The coils were so familiar; Thor had spent countless hours tangled in them, as Jormungandr had never tired of squeezing himself around the thunder god, just tight enough to remind him that his death could come at any moment. And the mouth was so familiar, gaping open like a cave with two massive ivory towers for fangs.

When Jormungandr swallowed him, Thor nearly laughed. So the serpent really was planning to try and squeeze him to death, then. The walls of his throat were tight around Thor, choking and binding, but Thor was too old and too strong by then for it to stop him. He clawed and he struck out and he left a bloody ruin inside of Jormungandr, until he finally kicked his way out through the black scales that had become so very recognizable by then.

Jormungandr was gasping for breath, twitching and hissing, and Thor lunged for one of his massive eyes. Those eyes were as big as the moon, and Thor had become equally accustomed to being watched over by them. Never comfortable, because things were never quite comfortable between them, but the weeks with Jormungandr had been a regular cycle when the rest of his life fell into chaos. Thor dreamed of those eyes, sometimes.

Mjolnir plunged through Jormungandr’s eye and straight into his brain at the same time that one of the serpent’s fangs sunk into Thor’s hand. They fell to the ground together, a descent of miles, and the impact knocked Thor senseless. When he finally came back to awareness, it was to find Jormungandr breathing his last breath.

Thor stared down at his hand, or what was left of it. The razor edge of Jormungandr’s fang had sliced most of his hand cleanly off. Thor could see the venom moving through his arm, making the veins stand out blackly against his skin. Already, he could feel his muscles going weak, his heart starting to fall out of its rhythm. Beside him, Jormungandr was hissing something, staring at Thor through the ruin of his eye before the life left it entirely.

“I will see you soon,” Thor murmured, resting a hand on Jormungandr’s scales as the snake finally went completely still.

Panting for breath that wouldn’t come, Thor pulled himself to his feet. He leaned against his fallen enemy’s corpse and stared out over the battlefield, only to find his brother staring back. Loki was a ruin. His skin was cracked and acid scarred, his hair falling out in patches, and his eyes wide and mad. He stared at Thor, horrified, and reached out a hand to him.

Thor smiled, soft and small. His end had come, but at least he would see his brother one last time. In the time before Ragnarok, when Thor had been feeling maudlin, he’d told Jormungandr that there was something comforting about knowing just how it would all play out. It was a reassurance. He wouldn’t have to worry about his loved ones as he lay dying. Jormungandr had just snorted in a way that meant he thought Thor was being a self-sacrificing fool and rolled over to sleep.

Thor patted Jormungandr’s scales one last time. He had nine steps in him before he would fall. Thor figured he ought to spend them doing something useful.

He turned towards Loki and started walking.

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics separating the sections are from Florence + The Machine, as is the title.


End file.
